"It's easy to overpromise, but even easier to underdeliver" - Futurist Jim Carroll
Nothing great is ever achieved when the gap between expectations and reality is never closed!
Leaders can become trapped by their rhetoric - the more ambitious their promises, the more pressure they face to maintain the illusion of progress, often leading to cover-ups, denial, or doubling down on failed approaches rather than acknowledging reality. The lesson isn't to avoid ambitious goals, but rather to maintain a clear-eyed view of actual capabilities and progress, and to prioritize honest communication over maintaining appearances.
Yet too many leaders do that,.
The situation becomes worse when the gap between promise and delivery is vast simply because of fraud, dishonesty, or plain incompetence. The fact is, leadership failures that are based on this of overpromised under-delivery aren't just setbacks - they can be extinction-level events for organizations. Just ask Elisabeth Holmes of Theranos or Adam Neumann of WeWork.
In the next few years, we are likely to see some pretty significant expectation mismatches. It's easy to make a promise - it's tough to deliver on it. Particularly so when people have high expectations that will be almost impossible to deliver!
Why does this come about? In some cases, it can be due to what I call the "velocity gap" - leaders make vast promises but underdeliver because they can't align the organization to the speed of change. In other cases, it underestimates the effort to achieve the stated goals - call that the "delivery gap." Elsewhere, it's an innovation mismatch - and the lack of a "perpetual innovation engine," such that the organization is not rethinking fast enough.
The sad fact is that this mismatch can occur all too often. In the last few years, we've seen a fascinating example of this type of mismatch with what has happened with Sonos, the company that brought to the world one of the most sophisticated home speaker systems. They had a quality product unmatched in the industry, and a rabid fan base as a result. And yet, an entirely botched software upgrade - one that was said to be a vast improvement for the product - led to angry customers, leadership turmoil, and failed delivery. The CEO just left; the company is in shambles; and the existing customers are vastly disillusioned. The brand damage that occurred is almost immeasurable and may not be recoverable.
That type of thing can be the ultimate impact of the delivery gap - people finally see through a false promise and realize they've been duped.
Remember, in 2025 and beyond, the gap between promise and delivery isn't just a credibility issue - it's a survival metric in the age of exponential expectations!
Futurist Jim Carroll fully expects to see some pretty significant delivery mismatches in the next few years!